Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

A friend who works in publishing has told me that Hearst are making cutbacks.

Nothing has been ruled out, including cutting or closing down Digital Spy.

Some magazines will close too.

Some cuts have already been made, with new moderators no longer being paid etc.

It is thought that the rise of social networking sites & ad blocking are two of the main problems.

I don't know how much it costs to run a forum of that size, am I right in believing that it doesn't cost that much to host a forum, it's the bandwidth needed when people click on and retrieve threads that uses up bandwidth?

IIRC didn't Cable Forum take on the members of a forum that closed?

I can't give a link as this was told to me over the phone, so will understand if people wish to take this with a pinch of salt.

Edit: Now been posted/leaked on Twitter by Mark Sweeney (whoever he is, journalist??).

https://mobile.twitter.com/markswene...30735857156096

For balance, Digital Spy Forum Support have denied that Digital Spy will be affected and are said to have closed a thread about this because it was off topic.

It's certainly less busy than when James owned it and the lack of investment is showing eg the search facility has been broken for months and there are no plans to repair it.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

I stopped using DS many years ago.

The forums I always found were not particularly welcoming, the moderation system was just bizarre (the staff were totally anonymous) and then the main site became overrun with adverts, inc pop-ups, and that drove me away for good.

My login still works, and the search seems to work for me.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Personally l used it a couple of times and was not impressed so alas sadly one has to put up with me on CF for a good deal longer.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

I used to use DS a lot but since the recent site change I have not bothered. It became less news like and focussed on click bait and reality TV nonsense.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

I browse their forums everyday, almost never look at the main site though.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

I use the Forums mostly September to December, because I have family who want to know the result of Strictly Saturday night. Never use it outside of Saturday night in those months, and never between December and September.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Ha ... someone from DS contacted my missus when they found out she was going to be in the Strictly audience and asked her to be their "mole" ... she declined to answer them. :p:

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

I visit Digital Spy quite regularly, but it's not what it was.

I was never a massive user of the forums, although I did enjoy my few visits there.

I did used to like the main site though. What persuaded me to join the forums was that I was looking at the main site, and it had a (then) excellent mix of tech news, cable news, TV news and movie news, provided by a team who seemed to know their stuff.

Lately, maybe it's because I'm getting older, but the forums have lost what atmosphere they had. I also used to enjoy a good argument in the comments section on the main site, which has been removed, sadly.

Regarding content, I feel they are concentrating too much on the reality TV now (it was always present, but was a lot less prevalent previously).

I think, in general, it's gone from an excellent tech site with a little gossip on the side to a largely gossip site with a little technical news on the side. Something which is in line with Hearst's magazines, but has probably lost Digital Spy a lot of members.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Well, it looks like the main problem is that the adverts became so intrusive that most users installed an ad blocker out of necessity.

Something is putting people off as the site gets 17.30m visitors a month, but they only stay on average for 1 minute 41 seconds.

69% of visitors bounce straight back off again, of those that stay, they only read 2.22 pages before leaving.

Some members are thinking of setting up their own forum, but I think that they think it to be a lot easier than it will be.

I'm sure there's more to running a forum that getting some free hosting and appointing a few mods as they appear to think!

If it's true that bandwidth is eaten up by people retrieving threads, I think that they should focus on cutting costs by closing pointless/childish threads such as the count to a million thread!!!

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Then it will quite rightly close. What's the point of keeping it open? It doesn't appeal to users any more.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

It was very successful when James owned it.

I know that factors like the increased use of social networking sites have played a part, but it does seem to have been badly run since being sold.

By this I mean intrusive ads, click bait, a focus on showbiz/celebrity rubbish, bizarre and inconsistent moderating decisions eg someone was suspended for using the term "blacklegs" to describe a group of people breaking a strike. Apparently, this was 'racist' because one of them was of mixed race!!!

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

I thought people on D/S loved celebrity based rubbish,judging by how many people post on the X -Factor,CBB,i am a celebrity,and scrictly come dancing, The Apprenctice et al tosh threads.

Celebrity seems heaven made for Hearst and D/S.:erm:

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

James doesn't own it any more though. It's now a carp site. Let it go!

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

I believe that it is a subject worthy of discussion if others wish to do so.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

We'll see.

My view is that since James sold it it's gone downhill and is not even worth a mention now.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

The problem with someone buying it is, the money they have tied up in it needs to pay back somehow. Hence the pressure to increase traffic and get more clicks on more ads.

Back in the early days the DS forums were not so very different than here. DS obviously had a broader subject matter and appeal and grew larger than we did. But we have always been a privately owned site run because we just want to do it basically .... we advertise to cover costs but we have no investments to repay and no staff wages. So as social media has put old fashioned bulletin boards under pressure they have had further to fall and more to lose, and we have been able to sustain (modestly) lower visitor numbers without cutting back on what matters, namely your daily dose of forum banter. :D

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

I think you're absolutely spot on there Chris.

I don't know why Hearst thought that transferring their frivolous subject matter from their paper magazines to a forum built primarily on an interest in technology and media would work.

In addition to all the aforementioned external pressures faced by CF and other forums, it has had to face competition from the launch of the VM Community Forums, yet has still survived.

I guess that this forum is also lucky in that Paul does the technical side of things, the DS search facility has been broken for yonks, they are aware of it, but there are no plans to fix it!

Surely it wouldn't cost that much; it's so unprofessional for a forum not to have such a basic thing as a search facility- there are duplicate threads all over the place.

If nobody reports them, they just get left because it's only reactively moderated.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

I'm sure James walked away moderately happy though.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Oh yes, he (and the other owners) got paid "a significant amount" for it.

They built it up and then sold it on at about the right time.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

And now is perhaps the right time for it to close.

The old adade applies the same here as to any other business. It's easy to lose customers but a damn sight harder to get them back again.

They've lost users who now get their info elsewhere.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Bandwidth is really quite cheap - and you can spread the load across multiple web servers. You can get a 1 TB VPS to run as a web server for < £100 per year. Storage (for the database) is really just as cheap as well. The cost of a thread like you mention would be little more than pence per year.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Oh right, I didn't realise that it was this cheap to run a forum.

Maybe the savings will be made from staff wages ie the moderators that are still paid, journalists etc.

I have a friend who hosts a website in his cellar! It's really warm and he has to have a dehumidifier on 24/7.

I'm thinking of hosting a server myself:

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...2#post35871262

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

And you'll see the quality of the site deteriorate further and lose more users.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Agreed. I also think that I was being kind in giving them the title of "journalists"!

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

As Paul says, extra threads (no matter how pointless) don't add much to the cost of running the site.

I think you've hit the nail on the head with the statement about advertising. I don't mind advertising on a site (I understand they have costs, and they have every right to make a profit), but the advertising on DS has gone from a mild diversion to a massive pain. For a long time, I couldn't even access the site from my iPad as the full screen ad they insisted on displaying on the main page frequently crashed safari.

I think they can survive, but they need to make the advertising less intrusive. They also need to drop the animated gifs, which make the site look a little like a flashy geocities site from the 90s.

I'd like to see the comments on the articles come back, but they disappeared around the time of the Tulisa court case, and while they were apparently disabled for maintenance, I don't think they will come back.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

DS is currently unavailable due to updating its software.

The forums due to be cut seem to relate to gaming.

There is going to be a ban and terminated account amnesty.

Anyone who wishes to have their ban reviewed can send an email to forum@digitalspy.co.uk with 'Ban amnesty' or 'terminated account' as the subject heading.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

I would, but as I have a new account on there I don't want to cause trouble and get banned again. Although I suppose I could always ask for the new one to be shut down or something.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Wow, are they really that desperate for members :erm:

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

I think a lot of the banned people will have reregistered under another name or will be attempts at creating duplicate accounts.

---------- Post added at 14:29 ---------- Previous post was at 14:25 ----------

There has been widespread criticism that people were inappropriately banned or that infractions were being issued to some people or even nothing at all for something that others had been permanently banned for.

There are still rumours going round the media world that they will be closing next year.

I personally think that they are trying to get their house in order and that this is the last chance saloon to sort things out before throwing in the towel.

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/annou...php?f=22&a=397

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

2nd day down, if their 72 hours was accurate it should be backup tomorrow around 10:30am.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

If all goes to plan, yes.

It had been said that the old vBulletin software was so corrupted and old (2007?) that they would have to start from scratch, but the people implementing the new software are the same people who wrote the old software.

They've obviously found a way to transfer all the data across. I was told the name of the new software, but I'm afraid I can't remember it!

They are to introduce 'Jail Time', where instead of short term bans, people can still post but not create threads.

I think a similar scheme of points is to be used in a similar way to Cableforum.

Also, a system of 'likes' in a similar way to Facebook is to be introduced. I know this could be viewed as pandering to the millennials, but sometimes people just want to agree with a post and not necessarily comment.

Some people were doing '+1' as posts, so some years ago a minimum character requirement was introduced.

+1 is regarded as bad etiquette on here, but I don't think it's disallowed.

I hope that DS will be reintroducing training to their moderators, as I think that this has what has led to the overreaction and inconsistencies that have led to say many members leaving the site out of choice or otherwise.

Hopefully we will see an end to people being pulled up for calling a strike breaker a 'Blackleg' as it's deemed to be 'racist', asking what an abbreviation means or being offensive about the queen :erm:

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

the forums back up.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Thanks.

Looks like they are having problems to me.

They were talking as though the last few days of it being read only were because of the migration to the new software.

Now it's returned with the old software amidst talk of learning important lessons about things that need to be ironed out before the "next migration"!

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

I think reading the post from today was that they wanted to see how a mass migration would go, they found some bugs and are now working on finding fixes for those before attempting again. Personally, as frustrating as DS can be at times, this is the right approach. Why move, with bugs that annoy everyone? This way they know what the bugs are that need to be fixed and then when they DO move over it should all be smooth.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

They are running vBulletin 3 (same as we are).
However, they are still on a much older version (3.6.8), while we run 3.8.11.
Software does not "corrupt" as it gets older, but they would need an old version of PHP to be able to run it properly.

It sounds like they will be moving to Xenforo, since that is written by some of the old vbulletin developers [from 2007].

(Btw, I work part time for vBulletin).

---------- Post added at 00:07 ---------- Previous post was at 00:02 ----------

Its the wrong approach, and sounds like they are trying to paint a failure in a rose tinted manner.
You test migrations using a copy of the database, in private, on another server. You dont take down your live site for two days to run a "test".

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Used to be a frequent visitor of Digital Spy and its predecessor satellite, tv news and cable:news sites and before that it was newsgroups like alt.tv.satellite.europe, UK.media.cabletv (or whatever the hell they were called).

So, as far as being interested in anorak subjects like the colour and size of a DOG (digital on screen guide) aka channel logos, or what Tony Illsley (former cableco boss) was doing, or a argument (one of many!) about the BBC, DS and its predecessors was the place to go.

I don't know why James sold the site to Hearst, does anyone know? But since then, its been downhill all the way. And then when the ads increased and the colour/forum makeover happened, that was it for me and came here instead!:)

Clearly, there is still an interest in anorak subjects such as cable tv and media in general. I've been known to visit other anorak sites which may (or may not) include people standing on bridges with notepads as trains come in, as but one example...

Where it all goes wrong, is money. Business' exist to make money. I don't blame them for that, that's what they do. I'm not a socialist, quite the opposite. But no one really has come up with a way to monetise the anorak and perhaps never will, so these subjects will probably always remain outside the commercial sphere.

Which gets me onto my point, finally..... I am sure I have said it before here, but I'll say it again, there needs to be a site which does have a meeting place for us anoraks interested in subjects like satellite and cable tv, streaming, broadcasting etc And the solution appears obvious to me....

I have some ideas which I would quite like to discuss and happy to do so on this thread. I know nothing of running websites or how much servers cost, or anything like that. But I do have a bit of time and a few pennies to spare.

Frank used to own this site, who does now? How do I get in touch with the bossman (or lady) to have a chat?

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

PM Mick or Paul M

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Does Mick accept PM's, could be wrong but I think he has then switched of sometimes iirc

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Digital Spy is going read only from Tuesday 21 February; they don't know when they will return.

Users have been advised to check out their passwords before this time as it may be the case that they will not be able to retrieve them after Tuesday.

Apparently, the delay was because they didn't want to cause any disruption during Celebrity Big Brother.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

What a load of bull. (mod edit)

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Its just the forums though not the whole site.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

That is the real problem. Businesses should exist to do/make/supply something. If they do it well they will make money. Put another way, profit should be a result of business not its goal. There are many good companies out there where profit is not ignored but isn't the prime goal, some are very successful and long lived and some even in the financial arena.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Not sure what you mean, apart from the forums the rest of the site is read only anyway :erm:

Totally agree.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

I know an ex-mod from DS, she reckons the place has been sinking for months and this move is likely to be a last effort to reboot interest in the site.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

well the news pages(If you can still call them that) are still going to be updated. Some people may take read only to mean the whole website is never going to be updated again.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

They do intend to lift the read only status, but they don't know when as they don't know how long it will take to migrate everything over.

Never thought about the news pages, as you rightly allude to they're so bad that I no longer bother to look at them.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

I know, I read this post on the forum

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Apparently just before they locked their forums someone posted an invitation in loads of threads to keep the conversations going by joining up here...whoever it was, nice plan :D

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

LOL. :)

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Just had a (quick) look and can't see anything, maybe they've deleted it??

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Yes and apparently have been banned in the process :erm:

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

You should get a tee shirt printed. :D

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Ha! Now that takes me back....Ah Brian, bless 'im.

Oh and in the words of Shaggy, it wasn't me - but I do wish I'd thought of it!

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Oh dear, my first thoughts were I don't remember hearing that line in scooby doo oops:

It has been a long night

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

How long should an upgrade take?, didn't even notice any downtime when OverclockersUK recently upgraded their old forum version.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Hi I just found this place there really not many places left to talk I also really miss imdb boards.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

They are having a ban amnesty, so whoever did it can have a chance to make amends if they wish to.

I don't know enough about these things to say, but it does seem very odd.

In the real world businesses are loathe to close for even a very short time as customers find other places to go.

There's still lots of places left to discuss allsorts of things, it just depends what your interests are.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

So do the trolls, which apparently is why they were closed.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

I am baffled by the DS bashing. There are elements of the site which have been badly run, HOWEVER the forums are the best on the entire internet. Where else can you see such a comprehensive selection of different forums together, which are easy to read and get a lot of use? General, gaming, movies, broadcasting, music, movies, advice and even more specialist ones.

Now, the adverts are becoming a huge problem across the board. Once reputable broadsheets are now reduced to clickbait headlines. Look at the Telegraph facebook page for example. Journalism is now about causing outrage, then stepping back and laughing at the reactions and hoping they noticed an advert. Its a system which is ruining the finest institutions of broadcasting across the board.

Already on this site the page numbers of the threads are tiny and hard to click. Hurry back DS!

And as for people saying they had disagreements on the forums - of course - which forums do every user have the same opinion about everything? lol.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

LOL, I can only guess you dont get around many forums. :)

Well if thats your only concern, I'm glad you like it here. :cool:

You do realise that once DS comes back, its going to be different software, not what you are used to, so page numbers may be the least of your worries. ;)

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

DS went downhill as soon as it was taken over and based in the US. Thats when all the reality nonsense took over.

Also certainly not the best of friendlist forums on the internet. I frequent a lot of other places that have better forums.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Looks like they are back, and running on Vanilla (So nice small page numbers ;)).

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Had to turn emails off, no option for only one email for thread updates.
was getting flooded with emails for every new post, incompetent.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

My eyes hurt...

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

It now reopen...

I hope Cable Forum don't go for that look - too much white and some of the TEXT is too big.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

It looks awful as if it was done as a primary school IT project :sick:

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Damn it is pretty awful :erm:

Then again, why do I care. This is the only forum I've ever been active on so I'm probably expectant of it being as basic and easy to use as possible, the best part of CF is just how simple it is.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

.. and we intend to keep it simple for as long as is practical.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Very simple as you say and l hope they will keep it that way.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

The problem of clicking on a thread, it then jumping up/down and your click being used on an entirely different thread remains.

Also, it seems to take forever to load some links. At times I've had to close the site and start again because of this (unless it's just me).

I think it could be the adverts that are now placed in between some posts that cause the problem whilst taking forever to load.

Are these the issues that you mean Paul?

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

I never mentioned any specific issues.

After it came back, I went to look around and after a few minutes it locked Firefox up and crashed it, not wasted my time again since.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

That's why I asked; I use Google Chrome and it's not working properly since the upgrade.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

Some of us were part of DS from the beginning, even before it became DS. Even before the before, became DS....

We don't bash it for no reason, a bit like any break up, you really miss something that was a part of your life. We miss what it was, that's what makes us so angry.

I agree it's still an excellent collection of topics, but the whole emphasis of the wider site changed.

DS was originally a anorak site to talk about broadcasting, satellite tv etc and each "owner" of each part of the site filled it with news. It was excellent.

What DS became is a celebrity dominated non-anarak site to try and appeal to the masses. Well, all the masses that like all the celeb rubbish, I don't.

---------- Post added at 12:16 ---------- Previous post was at 12:11 ----------

I like big text, but the white makes my eyes bleed.

It is though, an improvement on the previous look.

---------- Post added at 12:22 ---------- Previous post was at 12:16 ----------

I am starting to understand myself that its harder than it looks keeping things "simple"...;) But that really is the key. Forum sites should be nice to look at and and simple to use. If you want people to spend their leisure time on them, that is.

I think with this site (I'm starting to understand more about the mechanics of such things) is heavily modified which would have cost the owner a small fortune, unless he's done it all himself.

So, simple to use, but not quite so simple under the bonnet.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

This site is maintained (and modified) by me. :)
The only costs are the actual costs of the servers to run it. :cool:
Those costs are covered by the small number of ads you [may] see.

Re: Digital Spy may be closed or downsized.
 

The ability for users to vote up/down posts has hit problems already.

At first some members were homing in on particular people's posts and downvoting them, which led to bans/infractions.

The problem continued, so the facility has now had to be suspended.